Why India was right to vote against Israel in UN over Gaza

On Wednesday, July 23, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Israel’s “military operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

India voted for the resolution which was adopted by a 29-1 vote. The sole “no” vote was the United States.

What precisely did the resolution say? Here’s the full text:

“In a resolution (A/HRC/S-21/L.1) on ensuring respect for international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, adopted by a vote of 29 States in favour, 1 against and 17 abstentions, the Council strongly condemns the failure of Israel, the occupying Power, to end its prolonged occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem; and condemns in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014 that may amount to international crimes, directly resulting in the killing of more than 650 Palestinians, most of them civilians and more than 170 of whom are children, the injury of more than 4,000 people and the wanton destruction of homes, vital infrastructure and public properties.

“The Council condemns all violence against civilians wherever it occurs, including the killing of two Israeli civilians as a result of rocket fire; calls for an immediate cessation of Israeli military assaults throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and an end to attacks against all civilians, including Israeli civilians; demands that Israel, the occupying Power, immediately and fully end its illegal closure of the occupied Gaza Strip; calls upon the international community to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance and services to the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip; and expresses deep concern at the condition of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails and detention centres.

“The Council also recommends that the Government of Switzerland, in its capacity as depositary of the Fourth Geneva Convention, promptly reconvene the conference of High Contracting Parties to the Convention; and decides to urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014, and to report to the Council at its twenty-eighth session.”

Most European nations abstained. All others (29) voted for the resolution. The US routinely votes against any UN resolution which criticises, even obliquely, Israel.

Many think the Indian vote condemning Israel was wrong. Israel is after all a reliable friend and defence partner. A resolution against it in the Rajya Sabha was blocked. So why condemn it at the UN? Besides, Hamas is a terrorist group: why indirectly condone its tactics? It has no love lost for India. And it is fast losing support among even civilian Gazans.

The UN resolution, while condemning rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, does not mention Hamas by name – allowing Israel and the US to reject it as one-sided.

The bad news for Israel though is that the resolution calls for an “independent, international commission of inquiry to investigate all violations of human rights law in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza strip”.

The last time such an inquiry was held, in 2008, the Goldstone Committee strongly condemned Israel.

Palestine was under Ottoman rule till just before the end of WWI. Between 1917 and 1948, it was administered under a British mandate. During this period, the population of Jews in Palestine rose sixfold from less than 1,00,000 to over 6,00,000, due mainly to migration of persecuted Jews from central and eastern Europe.

The massacre of over 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in WW2 gave powerful Jewish leaders in Britain and the US a window of opportunity. Public opinion worldwide, outraged by Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust, favoured the immediate establishment of a Jewish state made up largely of European Jews and predicated on biblical prophecies of a Jewish homeland.

Had the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states under UN resolution 181, adopted on 29 November 1947, been delayed by even a year, the moment would have passed.

Palestine as a separate nation has a solid legal and civilizational foundation. In 1917, Article 7 of the League of Nations mandate stated that a new, separate Palestinian nationality be established. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations gave international legal status to Palestinian people and territories earlier administered by the Ottoman Empire.

How will the modern Palestinian tragedy play out? Israel, though a nation of determined and talented people whose centuries-long persecution in Europe rightly draws widespread sympathy, has two crucial weaknesses.

The first, as I wrote in my recent book, is demographic. Israel has a low birth rate. Net migration, due to the psychological state of siege it lives under is also now turning negative. Meanwhile, the Palestinian population is exploding. Though confined to narrow strips of land the number of Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank (over 6 million) has already exceeded the total Jewish population of 5.66 million in Israel.

But Israel’s real worry is the establishment of a separate Palestinian state based on the two-state solution brokered by the US at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007.

Palestinian demographics and cross-border fungibility could break down Israel’s ring-fenced security, causing its nervous European-origin Jews to migrate back to their homes in Russia, Poland, Germany and elsewhere.

The inevitability of long-term reverse migration haunts the Israeli political leadership. The result of reverse migration could be a creeping, back-door takeover by a neighbouring Palestinian state of much of the territory it has lost. It is this very real fear that drives Israel’s unyielding policy on Palestine.

For India, principle must trump expediency. Israel is an ally but that does not give it a carte blanche to violate human rights.

Hamas is a terrorist group with little local support and Arabs have been fairweather friends to India. But that does not alter the argument: Israel must negotiate – and negotiate quickly – by relinquishing the territory it has occupied and ratify, despite its misgivings, the 2-state agreement.

This will create an independent Palestine living side-by-side with Israel in relative peace. The alternative is intermittent terror and counter-terror.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the late industrialist Aditya Birla. After three years with The Times of India and a year with India Today, he founded, at 25, Sterling Newspapers Pvt. Ltd., a pioneering publisher of six specialised journals, including Gentleman, a political and literary monthly (whose senior editors and columnists included David Davidar, Shashi Tharoor, L.K. Advani and Dom Moraes), and Business Computer, in technical collaboration with Dutch media group VNU (renamed The Nielsen Company in 2007). Minhaz is chairman and group editor-in-chief of Merchant Media Ltd. and founding-editor of Innovate, a magazine for US-based CEOs. He heads the group’s think-tank, Global Intelligence Review. Having played tournament-level cricket and tennis – and rhythm guitar for his school rock band – he likes Dire Straits, R.E.M. and Sachin Tendulkar’s straight drives in roughly reverse order.
Follow @minhazmerchant on twitter

Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former. . .

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Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the late industrialist Aditya Birla. After three years with The Times of India and a year with India Today, he founded, at 25, Sterling Newspapers Pvt. Ltd., a pioneering publisher of six specialised journals, including Gentleman, a political and literary monthly (whose senior editors and columnists included David Davidar, Shashi Tharoor, L.K. Advani and Dom Moraes), and Business Computer, in technical collaboration with Dutch media group VNU (renamed The Nielsen Company in 2007). Minhaz is chairman and group editor-in-chief of Merchant Media Ltd. and founding-editor of Innovate, a magazine for US-based CEOs. He heads the group’s think-tank, Global Intelligence Review. Having played tournament-level cricket and tennis – and rhythm guitar for his school rock band – he likes Dire Straits, R.E.M. and Sachin Tendulkar’s straight drives in roughly reverse order.
Follow @minhazmerchant on twitter

Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor, columnist and publisher. A recipient of the Lady Jeejeebhoy prize for physics, his books include biographies of former. . .